Terrace Talk: Man United - A two-goal defeat was a blessing

Get your thinking cap on. Can you remember a more negative build-up to any United game in your life? I can’t. Try as I might, I couldn’t find anyone sensible who thought the result would be anything other than a defeat. Pressed for a further opinion, most of the lads I know offered various estimates of the size of the new bodily aperture we would be acquiring — “be it torn, punched, or drilled,” helpfully expanded a colleague.

Given that unprecedentedly gloomy background, I suppose some brave souls might contend that to have reached injury time and been upfield trying for an equaliser seconds before Salah’s clincher constituted an achievement of sorts. Even as I type this, mere minutes later, I still can’t believe United were clinging on as close as 0-1 until the very death, so predictably vast had been the gulf over the 90.